EXCLUSIVE!! FLASHFORWARD Ditches Showrunner Marc Guggenheim!!

I am – Hercules!!
“FlashForward” showrunner Marc Guggenheim departed ABC’s sci-fi drama for good Tuesday, sources tell AICN exclusively.
Reasons for the departure remain muddy. Ratings for the sci-fi drama have slid in adults 18-49 from a 4.1 (at its premiere) to a 3.1 for its fourth installment, but ABC just gave the show a “back-nine” order that will keep it on the air long enough to hit the April 29 six-months-hence “flash forward date” central to the series’ mythos.
Evidence suggests network executives were unhappy with the quality of the show's post-pilot storytelling.
Guggenheim, the “Eli Stone” creator whose resume includes stints on “Jack & Bobby,” “In Justice” and ABC’s “Brothers & Sisters,” joined “FlashForward” subsequent to its pilot shoot. (“FlashForward” co-creator Brannon Braga, who co-created and ran “Star Trek: Enterprise” and “Threshold,” is contracted to the now-shooting 2010 season of Fox's “24” and was not available to run “FlashForward” himself.)
Update: The Hollywood Reporter says co-creator David Goyer will now serve as the show's sole showrunner.

You know, I'm enjoying Flash Forward, I'm looking forward to seeing a lot more of it. But, the news about this show isn't the real news here... the real news is that the producers of 24 have signed that show's death certificate in hiring Brannon Braga. Ironically, while his work is of course far from stellar, I've tended to enjoy much of what he does (I thought Threshold, for example, got the shaft WAY too soon)... but the fact is the man seems to be the kiss of death for any series. What can I say... Jack Bauer is dead, long live Jack Bauer! (oh, and of course, naked Mandy)

I mean, the fuck does this guy know about entertainment? Who were the idiots at ABC who thought this guy should man a show like this? In the right hands, this could have been the next Lost. The book wasn't amazing, but the premise (which seems pretty banal at first glance) does suck you in the longer you hang with it.
As uninspired as the book is, it reads like War and Peace compared to the tv show. The writing, direction and acting (particular fienes - why couldn't his ff have been blank?) are just profoundly awful.

Here is how they might have made it better - the ff transports the world's consciousness ahead 20 years, as it does in the book, instead of the 6 months in the show. Instead of having the ff culminate during sweeps 2010, ala lost, you run the show with a series of flashbacks (to present day) and flash forwards (to right around the time of the event, and all points inbetween) for the first few seasons. That way, you get intriguing, sci-fi laden, glimpses into the future (one of the best things about the book). I would have had the series open each ep with some random person's ff (again, if it took place 20 years down, not 6 months - no one, aside from the elderly, cares about what is happening in 6 months. Iron Man 2 won't even be out in 6 months...), similar to the death scenes in six feet under.
So, if they stumble along to the end of the season and still have an audience, perhaps they could manufacture a second ff that transports everyone 20 or 40 years forward and essentially reboot the whole mess.

Braga's unique contributions during TNG stand out- the episode where Data is a sheet cake, Mark Twain running around with the Enterprise crew... turning the Borg into douchey post-Hugh idiots- all Braga. Ron Moore was the tasteful, smart Trek storyteller. <p>
And while we're on the subject, FIRST CONTACT is a solid movie, but its also a safe one. Remember your TNG continuity-- prior to the film, the Borg's last appearance on TNG led us to believe they were going into some chaotic period. But since the beancounters at Paramount wanted an action movie, Berman & Co. decided to ignore the Hugh-Borg stuff and recast the Borg into their Season 3 mold. FC was kind of a sell-out movie. I still enjoy it, but it wanted so bad to be BEST OF BOTH WORLDS and it wasn't even close. Michael Piller... that's the guy who wrote some of the truly great TNG episodes. Braga kind of lucked out by association. And he also co-ran VOYAGER, the worst of the post-TOS shows.

if we were judging based on talent.
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First Contact was actually shit, but fans lost their minds because it featured the Borg on the big screen.
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It was shit because : Zephram Cochrane was played like a redneck instead of a scientist, the storyline made little to no sense, and the whole POINT of the Borg collective acting as a homogenising swarm was rendered moot by giving them a fucking queen. Kill the queen, and its game over. THAT was the most fucked up idea in that movie, even more fucked up than giving data skin to get him to betray his crew.
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As for his TNG episodes, the dude was a one trick pony. It was a good trick, the FIRST time you see it. But it gets fucking tiring after that. Like Bart "I didn't do it" Simpson, Braga has long since resorted to "Wuzzle wuzzle" because we don't find his one trick entertaining anymore.
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The dude is a fucking talentless hack, and an almost complete waste of space. I say almost, because at least his mouth would make an interesting shaped urinal.

The fucking bjork music at the beginning made me cringe.why are writers constantly repeating themselves with the quick reminder of what the main characters "saw" every time, every fucking time a character mentions or is reminded of the flashforward? The last 10 seconds was the only interesting bit but thats probabably because another lost actor popped up but "new Lost" this aint!not my a long shot!

It was a pretty solid movie, and much better than any of the other Next Gen films, but I think it shot its load in the first act with the huge battle with the Borg cube. After that it was a bit anti-climatic I thought.
Personally I think the crew should have been thrown back in time during the battle with the cube and then they have to work to get back at the end of the movie to help finish the cube off. That way the film could end with more of a bang.

Mark Guggenheim showed up in the comments section of Alan Sepinwall's blog the other week, doing some damage control - saying it's not sloppy writing, basically.
Unfortunately sloppy writing is exactly what it looks like. If you need to tell people it's not sloppy writing, that rather proves the point. When all the mundane elements of the show are written so badly, there's no reason to believe that the one fantastical element is anything other than the poorly thought out mess it appears to be. It's a shame, as all the elements were in place for this to be good, and it took precisely one episode to prove otherwise.

I also know I'm not alone in thinking it was shit. If you didn't have a Borg fetish, and weren't blown away by the idea of them on the Big Screen, then what you were left with was a pretty shitty story.
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If you think I'm wrong, please take a second to address what I think are the major faults :-
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(1) Borg do from homogenising swarm, to a Queen ruled society. (Marked the end of the Borg as a real threat, IMO, something which was taken further and exploited badly by Voyager) You can thank Paramount head Jonathan Dolgen for that fucking gem of an idea.
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(2) The developments with Hugh etc.. from the show? Wiped from canon.
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(3) Borg can now adapt through touch (After assimilating nanites perhaps?) but no one mentions this. (It took them some time to assimilate Picard if you remember.)
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(4) Zephram Cochrane is portrayed as a drunken hilbilly instead of a scientist. Again, we've seen Cochrane before in Trek. He was a scientist. Not a farmer-brown type building a warp-drive with monohydrazine ala Salvage One.<br>
(5) Had we or had we not done the "Data betrays his crewmates for a chance at happiness/feelings/being human" bit, oh about a bazillion times already?<br>
(6) And finally, the plot made not a lick of sense. The Borg go back in time, to take over the Earth. So they fight their way past the Federation ships, and THEN go back in time? Or they park well away from Fed space, go back in time, and then go uninterrupted to Earth of the 21st century? I ask you, which plan makes more sense?
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No, the whole thing was dumb-dumb-dumb-dumb-dumb-dumb.

FlashForward, Fringe & Eureka. My only two problems with it were the cinematography which made the look like another CSI/Without A Trace with those Mosaic memories. And that the whole world blacking out and seeing the future hasn't received it's proper awe.

Hi friends. So, apart from acting and directing, what is the gripe? (I've only seen the pilot, so I'm not trying to start a fight, just interested to know.) Is it that there is too much series arc and not enough episodic story? Is it that there's no humour? These were probs that I guessed might present themselves. It seemed that the last 10 seconds of every ep would always be totally intriguing, but not much exciting would happen before that. Is the prob that the lead, Jo Fiennes, isn't very interesting - not exactly Tony Soprano. Pray tell.

The entire world blacking out and seeing the future, would be a literal world changing event. Yet in the show, it's treated with LESS importance than, say, the 9-11 terrorist attacks.
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How could I describe it... Try to imagine an episode of CSI, where 30 minutes in, the Visitor spaceships arrive like in V. Aliens make contact with Earth. Grissom etc.. are in shock, obviously. And then, NEXT episode, it's back to normal, solving crimes in the Vegas desert, every once in a while mentioning the new aliens in passing.
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It's kinda like that. World changing event, where the writers can't seem to wrap their heads around what *world* *changing* actually means.

Its a fantastic premise, but they are attempting to write to According To Jim-loving, retard Middle America. They are terrified the idiots in Des Moines will be unable to comprehend whats going on. So therefore, no one actually talks or acts in a way that normal people would talk or act. They talk in speeches that explain and advance the plot, for fear that if everything isnt explained, Omaha will lose the plot . So for example, instead of assuming we would be aware of some of the moral dilemmas of freeing a Nazi for information, they have to discuss it ad nauseum with each character getting their huge showcase speech. When the ex-alki is thinking of exhuming his daughter, he cant just think of it. He has to give his big showcase speech on taking a leap of faith. It isnt enough to have the cranky FBI head (pulled from every bad 80's buddy cop movie ever made) give the eulogy, you have to show his wife ahead of time explaining in detail just how hard it was for him to write the eulogy. It is unbearable, really. Add in the usual show-ending montage Greys-Anatomy style to the strains of whatever folk singer is popular that week, and a uniformly grim cast who apparently are taking lessons from BSG on how to completely lack any semblance of a sense of humor, and there you have it. Recipe for a train wreck. Makes you wonder how a show like The Wire can even exist on the same planet as this dreck.

Every character on the show acts like a god damn moron. I agree with the thing about the writers not being able to wrap their heads around or appropriately convey the massive impact this would have on the world, but the bigger problem is just how illogical and stupid everyone has been so far. The FBI agents are actualyl functionally retarded. Also, the idea that this tiny squad of FBI agents are the only people we see actively interested in investigating the blackouts is proposterous. They would have unlimited funding and a massive team and it would be the only thing that mattered. So many things in this show are soo fucking stupid, but the premise is so strong, it pisses me off.
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And that isn't even touching on how illogical some of the characters have been about discussing whether or not they can change the future. The characters barely even mention it as a possibility, and when they do it isnt "figure out a way to change it" its always "I'm not gonna let that happen to you" or some shit. It makes no sense. Someone needs to find a person who had a flashforward, and fucking shoot them. Prove that just because the person saw the flash, doesnt mean it will happen. Murder would have spiked the day after the flashforward, I guarantee it. People would want to know the limits. But not our characters...no...our FBI agent si too interested in filling up a corkboard with information that only exists because he saw it in the flashforward to begin with...which is the biggest fucking catch-22 ever put on television.

Pretty obvious the FF was a "world changing event". And the script is better (more logical/interesting) than 90% of other TV shows. Obviously the guy who got the phone call from Simon (Charlie) lives in the same vicinity as the FBI who are "hot on the case" so...how is that illogical? So much emotion but very few coherent thoughts in this TB.......

CPR is way more common than you think but toilet CPR is a bit more uncommon... who wouldn't be embarassed?? I do think there is some over-explaining... but more often than not it is for the good... besides, very few shows are as good as tier 1 - Lost, Dexter, Weeds etc... ;).

Ok, so we know that in the future, people are aware that the big blackout event has happened as evident by main guy (don't even know his name, how bad is that?) working on Mosaic and all the other shit going on in everyone's vision that was caused by the blackouts happening.
So here's my question -- why the fuck is no one like, "Holy shit, this is finally the time we all saw in our blackouts!" People would be having big parties ala Y2K, wearing "It's Blackout Day" t-shirts, rioting in the streets, all kinds of crazy shit. But instead, everyone is just going about their lives? With what everyone knows now, there's no way in hell they'll be just coasting through that moment in time!!!
Everytime I watch the show I can't not think of this and it's killin' it for me. That and the fact that absolutely nothing of interest happens until the last 30 seconds.

Great cast but wow are they doing very little with the premise. We should be learning more about each character's back story. And if it were up to me I'd make it a style of the show that every episode ends with seeing a glimpse of one character's flashforward that we hadn't seen before - even if it's a minor character.

is the only reason I'm going to watch this week. If he turns out to be as stupid and whiny as the rest of the characters... The doctor is insufferable; after last week's revelation about her fuck buddy, I'm waiting for them to spring some completely unbelievable revelation about her, too. Sulu trying to act angry and authoritative is funny. As already mentioned, the FBI supervisor is a clown. Grizzly Adams wears a DWP uniform, but never seems to work. Hell, the 4400 was more logical.

I actually think the show is pretty strong so far. Sure, there are far bigger implications of the flash forwards but it's not like they're many seasons into the show; it's only been like 4 episodes. There's plenty of directions to take this concept and plenty of time to get into the larger implications. Whose to say there aren't bigger organizations working on this issue? In fact, I think they've already suggested that more organizations around the world are working on it. It's just that Fienes' character is the only one that apparently gets far in his investigation because he saw his own leads in his flash forward. People are saying the show's writing is shitty but, c'mon, it's better than most shows on TV right now. How much ground do you really think they could cover in just a few episodes and within budget constraints?

I actually think the show is pretty strong so far. Sure, there are far bigger implications of the flash forwards but it's not like they're many seasons into the show; it's only been like 4 episodes. There's plenty of directions to take this concept and plenty of time to get into the larger implications. Whose to say there aren't bigger organizations working on this issue? In fact, I think they've already suggested that more organizations around the world are working on it. It's just that Fienes' character is the only one that apparently gets far in his investigation because he saw his own leads in his flash forward. People are saying the show's writing is shitty but, c'mon, it's better than most shows on TV right now. How much ground do you really think they could cover in just a few episodes and within budget constraints? And is it really a tragedy to loose the guy who gave us Eli Stone?

Great pilot with a lot of promise for the series and it fails to deliver in subsequent episodes. I am behind on my viewings on the show, but so far each episode got worse than the last. Maybe last week's episode was better.

I don't need instant ratification, but I need to be entertained. I have always defended Lost's practice of not giving too much too fast and not giving the answers that everyone wanted for seasons after the questions were introduced.<br><br>
The thing that pisses me off about this show is that they use some weak arsed writing to get their point across. The worst for me is when in episode 2 when they introduced the female sherrif who was estatic that she didn't see anything in her flash forward to only kill her minutes later just to manufacture tension with the main characters. It was lazy and telegraphed.

Guggenheim might be a nice guy, I don't know, but "Eli Stone" was one of the stupidest, shmaltziest, most wannabe shows ever. Thus I throw Guggenheim in with it.<p>
I'm glad they fired Guggenheim. He's not a science fiction guy, he's a cheese-ass shmaltz guy. "Flashforward" doesn't need a douchebag of such limited skills running it. They need someone else. Someone with balls and creativity.<p>
Maybe the network is going to hire someone even shmaltzier than Guggenheim, but I hope not. Keep the show focused and interesting, and I'll tune in.

Riker in the crazy house. Really dark for TNG and actually gave Frakes a chance to stretch a bit. And he (mostly) was the show-runner on Voyager in that middle bit of it's run where it got really fucking out-there (Holographic Klingons vs. Holographic Nazis? I'm SO there!) And, to everyone who says that Ron Moore wrote everything great about First Contact. I highly doubt it. They didn't turn into angels at the end. And the script they both wrote for All Good Things may be the best TV series finale - EVER. So he's got some great stuff under his belt throughout the years. And I even liked a few of his 24 episodes, ep. 3 he wrote this year with former Enterprise show-runner Manny Coto had Jack actually crack a joke ("This is gonna hurt") when he drove a car out of a parking garage to escape.

Had a whole interview on Newsarama and everything how the issues out now, "Who Was Ben Riley" are his final forever final issues for Spider-Man, mostly because he's too busy at his FlashForward "day job". Whoops. His issues were decent, anyway.

the show introduces all of these mind-bending connundrums about determinism and whether the future can be changed, yet it NEVER does anything with them. Its just glossed over and the action quickly moves on to the next chase scene.
<p><p>JimStansel, I've been thinking the exact same thing. Its not a problem that they aren't all having parties, its just the fact that NO ONE has mentioned this. In a show where there's FBI guys, doctors and other allegedly intelligent people its odd that this has not been addressed. Last point, in the 4th ep with the guy having the operation (the one who thought he was black in the future), all I could think of was that episode of Family Guy where Death gets injured and no one can die. If you had a flashforward, then surely that means you can't die, so people'd be jumping off buildings nd doing all kind of crazy shit just to see what happens.
<p><p>As annoying as it is, and cheesy ("Its time I came out of the dark" oh please, if you didn't cringe at that line something is very wrong) I'll still keep watching to see what happens next because the concept is so damn intriguing.

(1) How does having a queen change their nature? She serves a function like the rest of the Borg. They are non-individuals, but that doesn't mean they all serve the same function. The queen is like an ambassador. And as evidenced later in Voyager, the death of one "queen" is not akin to destroying the collective.
(2) No they weren't. It was established that the Borg treated Hugh's individuality "virus" like an actual virus, cutting off or destroying certain populations within the collective until it was no longer a threat. The self-aware Borg of "Descent" were basically a side story.
(3) So in your book, the species that absorbs and adapts technology isn't allowed to absorb or adapt technology? 'Kay.
(4) He's a drunk, but I don't see anything "hillbilly" about him as you put it. He has given up hope. His encounter with the TNG crew and the success of warp flight restores his hope. The movie specifically addresses what a different person he becomes after the events of First Contact.
(5) This was similar to "Descent," true, but it was a fairly small element of the larger plot and I don't think much suspense was meant to be built up around it.
(6) Now you're just nitpicking, because you want to dislike it.

Look, you can't have a bunch of people with Borg parts slapped on them. They wouldn't be Borg. They'd be a bunch of people with Borg parts slapped on them. They need a will, a central driver, someone who basically tells them "Hey, you! go assimilate that guy!", because they're basically mindless automatons with someone pulling the strings. That someone is the Borg Queen. Who runs the whole damn thing. I don't see how this conflicts with the idea of a Collective. She even says, "You imply a disparity where none exists. I am the Collective" Data then asks about the organizational nature of her relationship, which is a pretty funny meta-joke about Trek fans who'll be debating the idea of a Queen for years after the movie comes out, but she doesn't answer that.

The worst new show that everybody is watching. The thought process behind each character is more idiotic than the previous. This will fail by seasons end and a nutso fanbase will bring the garbage back again just to get snuffed out.

Jericho was a terrible show that became a soap after the first episode. At least FF has one or two soap elements. BTW, they fully say that other people are investigating the FF's they find that out in the second episode.

Husband could not wait to be targeted with lazers. #2 baddie could not wait to see who mystery girl was. Daughter could not wait to see who the bad man is or meet her kiddo friend. Beardy could not wait to see his daughter. FBI clown could not wait to become takes a shit guy part two (or number two). The flash forwards that need to be avoided are able to be stopped EASILY. Dr chick is the worst. "I am compromised by this patient" BAM. He is gone. No hospital would allow a patient doctor relationship that could put a patient at risk like this. If the Dr and patient have a problem, you shift doctors.<p> Making the cork board to begin with is STUPID. Especially if two episodes later he burns the friendship bracelet.<p> Snooping on the CIA? Wouldn't homeland or another government agency be better organized than 4-5 FBI agents. <p> What would make the show great is focusing the plot on Harold trying to save his own life. F everybody else. Why does he bend over and take it like a total bitch whenever somebody is critical of him trying NOT TO BE DEAD?? Why is he not trying with all his mght to avoid it. If tgis were the plot and he was trying to sabatoge the man guys efforts to recreate is flash forward, that would be a HELL of a lot more interesting. Oh, and F the Nazi guy. Jack Bauer would have shot him dead.

is clearly a set-up. The guy sitting on the couch is suspect zero, hence him being "late" or "out of town" during the car crash that injured his son, he was in the stadium in Detroit. He caused the blackouts, or was part of a conspiracy to cause them. Joe Fiennes realizes this and so sends his wife in to seduce him and get the information. Thats why she believes she would never cheat on him: she wouldnt, shes working for the FBI. Search your feelings, you know this to be true.

In my opinion, Jericho was a stronger show than this. Maybe not the second season, because they had no money, but I thought the characters were fairly well conceived on Jericho, which I can't say the same about FlashForward. Who the fuck cast the black guy who apparently runs the FBI or something? And how does that guy take himself seriously?

I suspect that it's a setup as well but that seems almost too obvious. It also doesn't explain Fiennes' renewed alcoholic binge. Unless that's being faked too. I doubt that dude is Suspect Zero though. Too boring.

ELI STONE LOOKED LIKE AB.SO.LUTE SHIT. Hope that Flash Forward gets better, I agree with a lot of the problems that everyone has brought up here. The pilot grabbed my attention, but the rest of the episodes have maybe 5 minutes of cool shit each. Liked the hacker guy's exploding house, loved the crazy shit with the crows in Somalia, and I liked seeing Charlie at the end of the last episode (even though that dialogue was cheese).

I love the premise and some of the story hooks they're dropping (like the shit that went down in Somalia), but the characters are so flat, pedestrian, and uninteresting. ABC clearly wants this to be event television - and I'm continually impressed by the production values - but Bragga/Goyer seem content to script this thing on autopilot. The dialogue is way too on the nose, the character interactions too much soap opera melodrama, and the plot is not handled realistically enough. Give the characters a bit more mystery and depth and hone in the focus of the show on the actual FlashForward plot (who caused it? why? can everybody change their future?), and this could be a winner.

Use of The Dark Knight spin in the first epsiode? When Shakespear/Sulu/Black Dude are talking to each other the camera is spinning from one person to the next. Just like the shot from The Dark Knight when Batman/Gordon/Harvy are ontop of a building having a talk?

Mostly, it takes a great premise in the novel and screws it up.
1 - Instead of decades in the novel, it only goes forward a few months. Most peoples' lives won't have changed noticeably in such a short time. What's the point? 2 - There are rumblings it was deliberate. In the novel, it was accidental. 3 - In the novel there was none of that "they were awake during the whole thing?!" EVERYBODY passed out. 4 - No surveillance footage because cameras/sensors were affected by the event (given its nature in the novel, this is believable). 5 - We see it from the point of view of those who may have been responsible. Should they come forward after causing such calamities? Should they do it again such that people, under a controlled experiment this time, can gain more knowledge of the future. On the whole the book was much better, which is all the reason one needs to dislike the series. Hollywood screwing up a good source yet again.

Count me in as one who looks forward to Script Girl's return. She doesn't take herself too seriously, occasionally has amusing tidbits to pass along, and is certainly not hard on the eyes. Beats a lot of the rest of this site.

its supposedly been 14 days since the blackout, in that time has NO ONE who had a flash died? At all, you'd think world-wide that would prove one way or another if they are real or not. I'm not criticising the show for not having done this, just the fact they haven't ADDRESSED it at all. I mean, surely that would be the best way to find out if its true or not, just go interviewing friends of recently dead people and ask whether said person had a vision?
<p><p>This is why I can't get invested in it, its like the characters are far less interested in the plot than the viewers are.

i totally agree with u, hes simply nitpicking just cuz HE didnt like it. a hive mentality makes sense to have a queen, or multiple queens as it turns out. just because it wasnt previously established doesnt make it nonsense to show up in a feature film. as for the borg assimilating through tubules, im sure that was established in some TNG episode prior to the movie. and again as far as i remember of trek canon...cochrane was a drunk and a genius, despite the appearance in TOS, his character was always described as that. hugh and his small enclave were a breakoff, they said they were seperated from the collective before they made more chaos....the descent drones were all altered by lore, again, seperate from the main collective...i can live with data being tempted with human feeling and emotions more than once...its like a drug to him...and as to why the borg didnt go back in time first...it was a backup plan to a main assault on earth...they didnt count on picard being able to pinpoint their weakest point, how could they know how much borg tech or knowlege he still had,, they couldnt, they were arrogant, if thats even possible for borg....i found first contact to be even better than wrath of khan...but i may get flamed for that...and there was nothing wrong with ENTERPRISE...it presented an altered timeline, messed up by the temporal cold war....the idiot trek fans couldnt wrap their collective limp dicks around the fact that their precious trek canon wasnt being stroked...they forced the producers to give them what they wanted, and the fans that were watching because it was new, stopped...and guess what ? cancelled//// i personally think the producers and writers should ignore fan complaints and requests and stop reading internet comments and do what they want to do.....fanboys and geeks and u people that claim u can do better are never ever ever satisfied with anything..thats fact

the show has been great for me, its riveting and exciting...i cant wait to see where it goes....but then again i dont have a stick up my ass about what makes quality tv....the most ludicrous comment was the one earlier where someone said it was too much like a "soap opera"...i guess he's forgotten hes watching a tv show and not a documentary...everything on tv is a soap opera of sorts...its called drama...duh....seriously, whats wrong with some of u people...

yeah but the cop did'nt have a vision, what I was saying was trying to prove the flashes AREN'T real. I get the plot mechanics they've set in place, its just when you have a bunch of characters who are supposedly investigating the flashes, its offputting when none of them are thinking the questions that the audience are.

Well, they could introduce it with some intelligence. Instead, they did it the stupidest way possible. They did it the weakest way possible. They telegraphed the sherrif's whole death from the biggind. I loved when the sherrif said, "I am happy that I didn't see anything in the future, now lets go on this gun standoff with this potentially dangerous criminal responsible for a worldwide catasphtropy. But before we go, let me get my target out of the car so I can pin it on my back."<br><br>
Seriously, we already knew that seeing nothing could very well mean you are dead. Are you really that dumb that you need a cheesey and poorly written set of scenes to back it up?

Another thing that bothered me was the whole Nazi thing. The guy was stated to be 85 years old. That means he was 20 when the war ended. They said he murdered thousands of people. The guy was a teenager for most of the war. Seriously, how many people could he have killed. He was probably only in the military for 2-3 years by the time the war ended. <br><br>
I know the producers needed someone who was evil to be the one Joseph Fiennes charachter makes the deal with the devil with and get burnt, but the days of using Nazi war crimminals are long past. Any Nazi who was responsible for any real mass killings would be dead now. <br><br>
Yet another example of bad writting on this show.

yeah bang on about the Nazi. It was lame. Also there is no way in fucking hell that the Germans would agree to hand a Nazi war criminal over to the Americans, to be pardoned! WTF! I know suspension of disbelief is important in sci-fi, but no need to take the piss.

they handed him over to customs agents in the US to set him free in the US... true he may choose to go anywhere but why would he....but i also had no nitpicky problem with his age....geeez its a TV show....get over it...just like i got over the sillyness that u could look up drops in crow populations around the world, that was silly as shit but i understand that for drama its neccessary...anyone that claims that the show is outta bounds realism wise should be watching the science channel and not sci-fi...

They made the guy sound like he ran the concentration camp. He was 20 years old when all the concentration camps were shut down. What was he a guard at that point?!? Most of the Nazi war criminals were either sentenced to death or no more than 20 years in jail anyway. Oswald Kaduk who was considered the most brutal SS soldier at Auschwitz only got a 25 year sentence and was released from prison in 1989. You think a 20 year old soldier would get a worse sentence?!?

It's just a TV show after all. It's not a documentary. It's a fantasy show. You're supposed to have fun with it. Lost was fun until 100 websites popped up about the series and scrutinized everything. I just enjoy it.

She said in her flash that she felt thar she had "feelings" for #2 baddie. Unless she was "faking" her feelings to convince herself it was real. That is getting way to forced at that point. Then one could also say they planted the shooting death and just knocked out so he would not flash. All too much and will prove how crappy tge execution is.

the pacing has been sluggish, and most of the time I feel like nothing really neat is going to happen until the 6 months are up and we see how things did or didn't happen like everyone thought. Stuff like the Nazi over-hyping his vision was a tremendous cheat, on par with the kinds of teasing htat got me to seriously turn on LOST for a while. They also need to acknowledge that just by seeing the future, most people have changed it. And I'm pretty sure that Sulu2 didn't see anything because he was blinded. His girlfriend saw him at the wedding they are planning, and I can't see her having a wedding with someone else after he's murdered. I think viewers are leaving because there's too damned much on Thursday nights, and like I said they think nothing of consequence will happen again on the show until six months later. It's like watching LOST because the crash was so cool and then expecting another crash every week. I guess I'd rather they dump the showrunner than the show if the pressure was on to sink or swim, but I didn't think the show was in that much trouble. Not nearly so much trouble as it would be if Brannon Braga were the actual show runner. His shit on Voyager and Enterprise was enough to make me never want him to run anything again. Oh yes, and I haven't forgiven him for Generations, no matter how "great" First Contact was (it wasn't).

I never had a problem with Lost, but then again Lost's writing is far superior to Flash Forward's. I can get over inaccuracies if the writing is good, but when it isn't you focus on those inacuracies. <br><br>
People love to compare Flash Forward to Lost, but other than two actors who were on both shows I see little comparisons. Lost did a wonderful job of creating a compelling universe and storyline and left people wanting so much more while providing very little. Flash Forward hasn't achieved that at all.
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There are a lot of things we should be interested in, but can't. For example, the flash forwards that several characters have refused to reveil but constantly hinted at (the male surgeon), I could care less about. I almost want to see John Cho die because his character is insufferable. This is a case of an interesting concept and poor execution. Hopefully with a new showrunner, they will correct that.

but it'll take a pretty darned gifted show runner and some talented writers to do it.<BR><BR>
The biggest problem was with the writing... The show runner first needs to take a close look at focus, pacing, key points in the plot and structure. The (new?) writers need to then fix everything else that was wrong with the writing. If he manages to figure it all out and basically re-architect the whole story, he should address issues with the directing, lighting, music and (probably) editing...

At least the BBC chose quality over quantity, and they spend nowhere near the absurd budgets for American shows, and still make better stuff half the time. I'm struggling to think of anything new from the states that has been worth watching for years!

If I were to compare the quality of those 4 episodes in regards to the later seasons... I certainly would have thought it to NOT last beyond its first season. I couldn't stand the show. But look what I'd become, staying with it.. a true fan of revived Star Trek. <br> I'm giving FF all my patience to become greater than it is atm. And I like what I see! <br> And I hope it will not disappoint like Heroes did after its first season. There I was enjoying the first 4 episodes. And look what happened years later... ;-) <br> FIRST CONTACT was a half baked movie! I could even live with the Borg Queen, but mostly the pacing of that movie rang my bells. And a Picard, telling his crewmates to lower their weapons, so the Borg wouldn't attack them... foul play, since every lonely crewmember just examining the crawlspaces would be borgified. Not a bad script, but not exactly a good script. They didn't know how to balance humor, drama and action. Even Generations did a better job there... save the Kirk part...

"Lost's writing is far superior to Flash Forward's"
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I'm going guess this is a highly subjective evaluation, because LOST, er, 'lost' me during the first season, thanks to an episode script which was so incredibly bad that, in the words of Mr. Cranky, "It hurts to have to actually refer to it as 'writing'." A doctor, who just might have heard of the Hypocratic Oath (do no harm and all that), threatens another survivor with a painful death unless he surrenders a valise which a KNOWN FELON claims is hers (don't need proof, after all, a known criminal couldn't be lying, right?) and, when they open it, there's ... a model airplane? Someone needs to get back on their meds. Worse, much worse, there are a couple of GUNS with ammo. But the doctor decides they need to hide them. People mustn't know there are weapons available. Er, there's something out there chomping on people, but we'll hide the means to defend ourselves because it isn't as though we might need it, right? Dumbest plot - EVER!

Most of the other talkbackers can't either. That shows that there are problems with this show. I think that Mosaic guy's wife is named Olivia, but only because someone may have remarked in another talkback that there are a bunch of chicks named Olivia on TV right now (like Olivia Dunham on Fringe). Me having to refer to these characters based on what they do or who they are on another show is a problem. It shows that I don't give a shit about any of them, which is caused by bad writing. I'm still onboard right now, but I hope they get their shit together soon.

I doubt you will find many people to agree with you about bad writing on Lost the first season. Seriously are you going to use a doctor threatening the life of someone else because it violates the Hypocratic Oath?!? On an island where people are fighting to survive.<br><br>
Besides, that isn't what I mean when I talk about bad writing. I am talking about things like telegraphing plot points. I will go back to my example of the sherrif is episode two. Anyone with half a brain knew she was going to die five minutes later the second she said she was happy she didn't have a Fast Forward. That is horrible lazy writing. John Cho putting his flash forward on the Internet and getting a call 2 minutes later from an operative who tells him details about his death is another. That is bad writing.

I would admit it really isn't much of a Trek movie other than the name and characters. JJ took a huge left turn in character development, themes, etc. But judging the film on its own and not how it fits into the Star Trek Continuum, I thought it was pretty entertaining.<br><br>
As for the worst Star Trek moie, for me it is a toss up with 5 and Star Trek:Nemesis.

Maybe, just maybe, its possible to like the Dark Knight AND JJ's Star Trek!! Wow what a concept! Considering this isnt the NFL and the movie arent in competition with one another, thus making the idea of "choosing teams" laughable and juvenile.

Lost, unlike Flash Forward, for better or worse believes their audience is INTELLIGENT. Lost did not need characters to awkwardly rehash a previous plot point in some awkward conversation or show a clip from a previous episode in the MIDDLE OF THE SHOW to remind viewers what had happened. Yes, it results in my wife constantly asking me what the hell is going on with Lost, but so be it. I'm happy to re-educate her... week after week after week. :)
For me though, Lost just really knows how to convey a tone perfectly. Whether its excitement or dread, they always seem to nail it even if the episode is a snoozer -- which has been a rare thing since S3 IMO.

"in the 4th ep with the guy having the operation (the one who thought he was black in the future), all I could think of was that episode of Family Guy where Death gets injured and no one can die. If you had a flashforward, then surely that means you can't die, so people'd be jumping off buildings nd doing all kind of crazy shit just to see what happens."
Of course people can die. YOu jump off a building and YOU DIE!!! What you don't seem to get is that anyone who would have done such a thing wouldn't have even had a flash forward because they would have already been dead 6 months down the road. What we're seeing in the flash forwards is a future in which everyone experienced their flash forward. It's a future where whatever you would have chosen to do in response to the flash forward, you actually did. So it makes it incredibly difficult to figure out how to deviate from that future because virtually everything you think of, your flash forward self also thought of. For example, if John Cho's character chose to quit his job, etc. to avoid getting murdered, that's likely the same path that led to his death in the first place. It's like every action you do, you've already done. It's much easier to make superficial changes like whether or not to wear the bracelet your daughter gave you that you were wearing in your flash forward but that's just the illusion of choice. Unless some game changer idea is introduced, there is no chance of free will conquering fate in this show.
Now a good question was brought up by another talk-backer. Knowing the exact time the flash forwards showed us, why did nobody we've seen so far seem to think to be looking at the lottery numbers at that exact moment in the future. But of course, if they did, they wouldn't profit much because if millions of people decided to do it, there'd be millions of winners of the same amount. You could try getting around that by holding up the lottery numbers from months earlier along with the date those numbers were picked...but again, maybe everyone else thought of that too.
But seriously, the shows had like 4 episodes. Give it a chance. How many great shows didn't capture their audiences in the first 4 episodes?

I understand what you are saying, but they haven't definitively stated that what happens in the flashes IS the future, I mean, AA sponsor guy saw his dead daughter, someone he has since proven to be actually dead, so that can't be the actual future can it? Again, my problem isn't that they haven't done ideas like this on the show, its just the discussion we are having is far more interesting than the ones the characters have.
<p><p>As for "no chance of free will conquering fate", I would imagine this will be a theme they'll get into at some point. Otherwise it'll be pretty boring watching the future simply come true EXACTLY as predicted for a whole season. Then there's John Cho's character, who is alive in his girlfriend's flash, implying that the flashes are just possible futures. Maybe I was a bit negative, I still like the show, its just the idea seems much better than the execution. If they just went all out dumb-fun with it, something like early Heroes or Buffy, then I'd go along with it, its just at the moment its all dead-serious which makes the obvious plotholes a little harder to forgive.

I just came up with the solution to why nobody's looking at the lottery numbers in their flash forwards. I hope this actually comes up in the show but it makes all the sense in the world that the lottery would be canceled for the next six months to avoid just that sort of thing. Though I suppose casinos would have some major problems too because you could go to a casino on day 2 after the flash forwards and write down the exact sequence of numbers hit on the Roulette wheel, etc. at what time and then choose to be looking at that list at the time 6 months in the future of the flash forward. Stuff like that is hard to explain away, but the writers of the show can only do so much and can't be expected to find solutions to everything.

and that's not going to work for this show. It was barely passble when LOST did it. But a couple of episodes have done really nothing. These characters aren't as interesting as the losties so they better consider going deeper into it's scifi tendencies. It's the "what happened" that's interesting here and they can resolve it early without having a "who killed Laura Palmer" backlash if WHY it happened becomes more interesting. We'll see. I hope it does get better. It's good so far.

The "lottery plothole" is just shorthand for what appears to be a failure of the writers to fully think through their own premise. So far, Flashforward appears to be wildly inconsistent, particularly regarding whether or not the future they saw includes the flashforward in its past. I'm prepared to believe they actually have thought it through. However, given how poor they've been at dealing with all the mundane elements, they haven't given me any reason to believe they'll handle the fantastic element any better. We're watching it under the impression that there is a well thought out, logically consistent set of rules for how the flashforward itself works. This impression is probably false, as the real the story is "oh noes my marriage is rocky, oh noes I dies in March." With mysteriously youthful Nazis and ERs mysteriously devoid of traumas, a Big Ben that bursts into flames after being left alone for two minutes, FBI agents who act like imbeciles and don't communicate vital information, the magic global crow population website, and so on. Not to mention the fact that after four episoodes the characters are completely failing to ask the questions which the audience was asking after twenty minutes, and not attempting the obvious experiments. So far they seem to operating under the assumption that the audience are complete idiots. That does not bode well. I really want to like it, but damn if it isn't making it difficult.

The best part of the entire run of FlashForward so far was the comedy-relief bit about the FBI director having a bowel movement both during and within his own flashforward, and then having to give mouth to mouth to an underling who was drowning in his own urine while having no idea what the hell was going on! Completely gross, but also hillarious.
I hope Goyer steps up and pens some episodes of this show, his work on the JSA comic was better than Star Trek: Enterprise as a whole.
And the lesbian storyline is cool, but it does come across as "Oh God, our story's sinking - quick let's put something on the next episode that will make viewers drool" kind of desperation instead of, say, growing into it the way Willow did on Buffy.
To be honest, ABC went with this instead of doing a TV version of the Vertigo comic Fables? Really? How's that working for ya?

I think we'll learn that at least two of the flash forwards, (the guy with the dead army daughter, and Cho's girlfriend) were actually flashes to dreams. That is, their characters were asleep and dreaming in the future.